And there were houses, too; and if they were not
biggit with stane and lime, and lofted like the houses at
Croftangry, yet they served the purpose of them that lived there,
and mony a braw bonnet, and mony a silk snood and comely white
curch, would come out to gang to kirk or chapel on the Lord's
day, and little bairns toddling after. And now--Och, Och,
Ohellany, Ohonari! the glen is desolate, and the braw snoods and
bonnets are gane, and the Saxon's house stands dull and lonely,
like the single bare-breasted rock that the falcon builds on--the
falcon that drives the heath-bird frae the glen."
Janet, like many Highlanders, was full of imagination, and, when
melancholy themes came upon her, expressed herself almost
poetically, owing to the genius of the Celtic language in which
she thought, and in which, doubtless, she would have spoken, had
I understood Gaelic. In two minutes the shade of gloom and
regret had passed from her good-humoured features, and she was
again the little, busy, prating, important old woman, undisputed
owner of one flat of a small tenement in the Abbey Yard, and
about to be promoted to be housekeeper to an elderly bachelor
gentleman, Chrystal Croftangry, Esq.
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